Full Hands and Hearts

Harvest Sunday. That’s what the St. Andrew’s congregation in Nchelenge, Zambia celebrated recently. They expressed their gratitude to God for the material blessings they had received in the past year. This festival is patterned after God’s command to the ancient Israelite community to keep three annual festivals to God: the Passover, the Feast of the Harvest (or Weeks), and the Feast of Ingathering (or Booths). (See Exodus 23 and 34, Leviticus 23, and Deuteronomy 16) The Feast of the Harvest entails people presenting God the best of the first crops they harvested.

On Harvest Sunday at St. Andrew’s, row by row, congregants sprang from their backless, wooden benches and began flailing arms, twirling, whooping, and singing with unbridled joy as they filed forward to physically present God the best of what they’d harvested. This was not a half-hearted “bring a can or two of something for the poor” deal. It was a whole-hearted big deal. Everyone contributed. Feeble old mamas hobbled, and lean young bucks shuffled along the bare concrete floor with hearts full of thanksgiving and hands full of their harvest best: pumpkins, whole sacks bulging with sweet potatoes or maize, bundles of ten-foot-long sugar cane stalks, cooking and palm oil, live chickens and geese, wood planks, and envelopes stuffed with Zambian kwacha.


Then it happened, again, more than once, during Sunday worship. I was blind-sided. No, not the usual, “You are welcome Rev. Bobe (Zambian for Bob!); we hope you will bless us with a word of encouragement today.” Translation: “We expect you to preach.” No, that’s not what blind-sided me. (I’ve actually gotten used to and expect that!) What snuck up on me was a tidal wave of emotion; I was suddenly choking back tears. I doubt it was just the spine-tingling harmonies of exuberant choir members swaying and clapping in unison while singing their hearts out in a GENUINE CELEBRATION of thanksgiving——and not just the adolescent young men accompanying them by extracting syncopated rhythms from hollowed out tree trunks clothed in taut animal skins. It couldn’t have been just the indescribable joy emanating from all those faces and bodies. No, it wasn’t just those things, but all of them——all of them infused with the fact of how little these people have materially, and how joyfully and willingly they were giving away the best of what God had blessed them with. It occurred to me that God might be quite pleased with their trust and obedience and the love they showed for neighbors in greater need than they——for that’s how these gifts would be used.


Are not these St. Andrew’s folks however, as spiritually rich as they are materially poor? They are not shackled by material wealth. What do they know that we don’t that enables them to radiate an inner joy and peace and freedom so few of us Westerners know——even as they give from what little they have?

As I made room for my bags in the back of our pick-up for the trip back to Kitwe, I noticed the heads of a couple live chickens peering out of a small cardboard box. I asked my colleague Richard what they were doing there. “There’s one for each of us,” he said, a gift of gratitude from the St. Andrew’s congregation——from the firstfruits they’d just collected. We were the beneficiaries of the congregation’s best gifts! Whew! I am grateful now, and certainly will give thanks again in November for having learned from sisters and brothers at St. Andrew’s in Nchelenge what it truly means to CELEBRATE thanksgiving.

Part II of St. Andrews’ Harvest Sunday will take place in September, at the completion of the harvest. Would you believe it will be an even greater celebration?